Camp Mystic Chief Health Officer’s Nursing License Temporarily Suspended
The Texas Board of Nursing has temporarily suspended the license of Camp Mystic’s chief health officer, saying her continued practice “constitutes a continuing and imminent threat to public welfare.”
Tuesday’s suspension order said Mary Liz Eastland failed to develop and maintain adequate emergency plans and training protocols before a July 4 flood killed 25 campers and two teenage counselors at the all-girls Christian camp. She also failed to keep adequate shelter and evacuation protocols, the order said.
Joshua Fiveson, an attorney for Camp Mystic, said Eastland rejects the allegations, adding that she received notice of the nursing board’s proceeding less than 24 hours before it took place. The temporary suspension was handed down without “the benefit of testimony, evidence or a complete investigation,” he said.
“Mrs. Eastland has admirably committed herself to service of others for the last eighteen years,” Fiveson said in a statement. “This was an exercise in premature punishment. But judgments should not precede process in an ordered system of justice.”
The nursing board’s order said its staff presented evidence and information regarding Eastland’s conduct during Tuesday’s public meeting. It also said a probable cause hearing will be held within 17 days of the order’s filing, with a final hearing to be held no later than the 61st day after the temporary suspension was ordered.
The order, first reported by the San Antonio Express-News, followed a series of emotional court and legislative committee hearings last month that hammered on the camp’s operational failures during the deadly flood. The Texas Department of State Health Services also told the camp in late April that its emergency plan, submitted under an application for a license renewal, was insufficient under new rules for youth camps.
Camp Mystic, which initially sought to reopen portions of the camp this summer, ultimately cancelled its bid for an operating license.
Eastland’s nursing license, originally issued in 2008, was renewed in January, according to the nursing board’s data.
The nursing board’s order also said Eastland evacuated her family during the flood “without providing any assistance or direction to all of the other campers and staff” or contacting emergency services.
The order called her conduct “deceptive” for failing to report the deaths of the 27 campers and counselors within 24 hours. Last month, Eastland testified at a court hearing in Austin that she still had not officially reported the deaths to state health regulators.
“I did not think of this requirement in the moments happening after the flood,” she said during an April hearing.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
